Law Commons^™

The Charging And Sentencing Effects Of Depth And Distance In A Criminal Code, Ronald F. Wright, Rod Engen

Ronald F. Wright

Today's conventional wisdom about criminal justice in the United States tells us that criminal codes do not matter much. The real impact of the criminal law appears not in the statute books but in the choices of criminal prosecutors who apply those laws. Moreover, decision-making by prosecutors takes on even greater importance in the context of late twentieth century reforms that have made sentencing more determinate and less discretionary. Scholars have argued that these legal changes have effectively increased prosecutorial influence over sentences.

Despite these claims, little is known about the actual use of prosecutorial discretion under these kinds of …

The Power Of Bureaucracy In The Response To Blakely And Booker, Ronald F. Wright

Ronald F. Wright

How will different jurisdictions respond to the recent Supreme Court decisions in Blakely v. Washington and United States v. Booker, which require jury fact-finding to support certain types of sentences? The best clues in predicting the answer to this question come from the people who know this world best, the sentencing bureaucracy. Sentencing commissions, mostly for benign reasons, hope to preserve their own place in the sentencing structure, or to expand their role if possible. The particulars shift from place to place, but this powerful tendency of bureaucracies for self-preservation offers a reliable way to predict the reactions of sentencing …

Plea Bargains Only For The Guilty, Oren Bar-Gill, Oren Gazal

Oren Gazal-Ayal

A major concern with plea bargains is that innocent defendants will be induced to plead guilty. This paper argues that the law can address this concern by providing prosecutors with incentives to select cases in which the probability of guilt is high. By restricting the permissible sentence reduction in a plea bargain the law can preclude plea bargains in cases where the probability of conviction is low (L cases). The prosecutor will therefore be forced to – (1) select fewer L cases and proceed to trial with these cases; or (2) select more cases with a higher probability of conviction …